Symphony of Opposites
by Chevira Lowe
Summary: A series of unrelated drabblefics highlighting opposite character constructs. Third chapter. Ino, Chouji, and a bag of chips.
1. Naruto and Sasuke

Symphony of Opposites.

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AN: First in a series of unrelated drabblefics. Criticism?

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They start the day early, just as the sun is timidly peeking out from behind the mountainous skirts to the east, a shy child with its cautious mother. It fills the sky with a kaleidoscope of color, shot through with pastels; pinks and greens and golds, and some colors that don't have names but don't need them, because the sheer aesthetic impact of seeing them and knowing they exist is enough.

It's dawn, and Naruto doesn't want to be awake.

It's daybreak, and Sasuke doesn't want to be sleeping.

They're a symphony of opposites, they two. Dark and light and wrong and right and somehow friends forever. And they're scowling at each other to prove a point they don't even understand.

"…Betcha I can go higher!" And Naruto kicks his feet against the ground and his swing wobbles unsteadily and he almost crashes into one of the poles anchoring it to the ground. He kicks the pole next, like it shouldn't be there, like it's not his fault he's a total klutz.

Sasuke smirks. "Oh yeah?" He mirrors the gesture –with far more self-assurance and capability than the boy next to him- and sure enough, he manages it. But altitude is always hard to sustain when one doesn't know how to fly, and falling seems to be an Uchiha family trait.

Naruto laughs, and straightens himself out and goes higher despite Sasuke's disapproving glance.

"…Idiot."

"Hah!" Naruto crows, triumph and elation tumble together to create a snub-nosed child with spiky blonde hair, blue eyes with the depth of an ocean, and a demon chained to his soul. "Admit it, you're such a loser!"

"I won't lose to you, idiot," Sasuke mutters darkly, and within a moment they're on the level again. Naruto's laughing and Sasuke's smirking and the two maybe remember why they've fought for each other, and with each other, and why they'd die for precious little else.

-

The next time they're here together; the playground is a macabre corpse, lifting skeletal fingers of metal and wood to the arrogant sunset.

It's nightfall, and Naruto doesn't want to be here.

It's twilight, and Sasuke doesn't have anywhere else to go.

It's been six years since they've been here last. They're eighteen now. Too young to love as yet, but old enough to die indeed. Old enough to have killed with their bare hands, young enough to never be taken seriously. Old enough to have seen comrades die, young enough to still have hope for the future.

Some of that hope is in Naruto's eyes.

None of it is in Sasuke's.

Naruto's sitting on one of those damnable swings, swaying back and forth with a child's whole-hearted enthusiasm. The years haven't dampened his spirit, darkened his soul or pushed him down a road from which he'll have to claw his way blindly back to the arms of the people who care.

Sasuke's not like Naruto, but they're still a symphony of similarities. Rhythm and tempo, shadow and shade. Sasuke feels the weight of his years, his soul's a yawning black cave waiting and wanting to be filled, and he's so lost in life that no map could ever lead him out.

So he sits on a swing next to a man he's loved and tried to kill and loved just the same and they don't speak. Not for a while, anyways.

"I forgive you, yanno, idiot," Naruto observes, and he's staring at the stars like they're the ones who matter. He grins and salutes to the sky and Sasuke says nothing.

"You're _welcome, _asshole." He laughs again, one of those delicate little flashes of a childhood forsaken, and Sasuke smiles bitterly.

He doesn't ask for forgiveness. He doesn't like being redundant. Instead, he undoes the straps of his haversack and rifles a moment and comes up with a popsicle, still cold thanks to a certain jutsu. He breaks it, hands the excess stick to Naruto and half-hates, half-exalts in the expression of live-for-the-moment _happiness _on Naruto's face.

"Hey, thanks!"

"Don't mention it," he mutters, and means it. Naruto licks at the popsicle with vigor. Sasuke savors his, slow and sure. And after Naruto's half-melts and dribbles down his hands and he's trying to lick it off, Sasuke gives up on him. Leans over and rubs at a spot beside Naruto's mouth with a thumb.

Naruto gives him a Look.

"Missed some," Sasuke says conversationally, and he sticks the thumb in his mouth deliberately. Naruto just shakes his head, mutters something that sounds like 'Bloody well turning into a pervert!' and they sit still.

"I wanna go somewhere," Naruto announces abruptly. "Like…somewhere not here. Let's go, Sasuke!"

-

'Somewhere' is on top of the Hokage's monument. More specifically, on top of the Fourth's stone carving. Naruto stretches, yawns, and ruffles his too-long hair. "Needs a cut," he says, tugging a long blonde strand in front of his eyes, going cross-eyed in his observation of it.

"C'mere," Sasuke says, flicking a kunai between his fingers. "I'll do it."

Naruto doesn't eye him suspiciously. Doesn't even question it. Slitting his throat wouldn't be that easy, because he'd fight back if he had to, but he won't unless Sasuke gives him a reason. A logical one.

Sasuke's a little tired of logic. He doesn't care if things make sense as long as they feel right. So he cuts Naruto's hair –messily, because he's a boy and boys aren't supposed to know how to cut hair- and Naruto checks his appearance in a battered forehead protector's mirrored surface and he grins.

"Cool."

Sasuke snorts, returns the kunai to the holster and pats the stone beside him. Naruto sits, and then leans, and then two seconds later he's draped across Sasuke's lap possessively and Sasuke is petting –_petting- _his shorn hair.

They're comfortable like that. It doesn't have to be perfect because it's them. They're masters of the art of imperfection.

"Hey," Naruto says, and his voice is muffled a little against Sasuke's thigh. "Nice view of the village, eh?"

Sasuke doesn't care about the village. He never has. They're shallow and senseless and they pitied him, all those years ago, for circumstances beyond his then-control. They whispered in dark corners and plastered him with their fake smiles and pinned fake hearts on their sleeves so he could make them bleed fake blood.

Sasuke doesn't care about the village. But Naruto does.

Symphony of opposites. Compassion and apathy.

So maybe Sasuke cares a little after all, just a little, and only because Naruto cares. It doesn't make sense.

He just doesn't give a damn.


	2. Temari and Shikamaru

Symphony of Opposites

Installment numero deus

AN: The 'opposites' in this one is rather more subtle than it was in the first one. Um. Oops. Up next, Ino and Chouji.

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He's lazy, and she loves him.

He's lazy and he loves her because it's easier –and less painful- than the alternative.

Their first meeting was preordained, their second sheer dumb luck, but everything that came after that was history.

When she was maybe eight years old, her father told her, with a voice that resonated like a knife blade striking a flint, that she would never be the kunoichi her mother had been. When she was nine she proved him wrong, standing over the corpse of an assassin with a kunai coated with blood that looked almost silver in the moonlight. When she was ten she knew what she wanted out of life. Not to fail or to fall but to live and to _fight. _

There are two people that she knows can beat her, without question. The first is her younger brother Gaara. The second is Shikamaru Nara. It isn't that Shikamaru is stronger or faster or a better fighter than she is. It's the fact that he's annoyingly intelligent that usually gets her. Temari is smart and she knows it, but she's passionate, too, and sometimes her heart rules her head, and sometimes she loses.

Either way, Shikamaru doesn't really care.

When he was maybe eight years old, his father told him that he was a genius, that he could do anything he wanted and go anywhere he wanted and he could probably even become Hokage, a title no one in their family had ever aspired to before. When he was nine, because it took that long to come to a decent conclusion on the matter, he decided he didn't care. When he was ten he knew all he wanted to do with his life was to sit around and watch the clouds as they rolled across the untouchable sky.

There's lots of people he knows can beat him, and he doesn't bother to list them all because really, he's not that energetic. There are also lots of people he'd surrender to, if it came to that. But there's just one person that he's _already_ surrendered to, been taken prisoner and doesn't care. She doesn't really treat him with the respect due a captured enemy, but, eh, he doesn't really care about that, either.

The fact that he doesn't care is probably why Temari's sitting on his chest with a kunai to his throat.

"Say it!" she growls, low and dangerous, and she presses the kunai a little too close for comfort and reminds Shikamaru momentarily of the woman Anko and her random blood fetish. Instead he blinks, lazily because he does everything lazily, and pushes the kunai aside with one finger.

"Say what? 'Hey, that's sharp?'"

She gives him a flat-lipped glower.

His lips twitch into a smirk and he shrugs, a barely manageable feat, seeing as how she's got him pinned to the ground. "All right, all right. You win. I'm demonstrably the worst ninja ever. Are you gonna get off me now?" He puts one hand up to shield his eyes from the sun behind her, making her hair glow like burnished gold, gives her a halo that makes her look like some sort of heaven-sent creature when he knows she's only human.

She grins viciously. He can always tell when it's done viciously because her cheek dimples on one side. "That's not the whole thing, you little rat bastard."

"Right. You're better than me." And looking up at her, all he can think is _Troublesome woman. _It's not as if she hasn't won before. It's not as if he hasn't _let _her win before. Losing to a girl is one thing, but losing to a girl_friend _is quite another, and Shikamaru's got nothing if not brains. Temari's kinda cute, in a way that's not really all that feminine –_and thank god. I hate women.- _and she's smart and all, but she's not about to offer him any competition with the go-ban.

So she stands up, and he catches rather more than a glimpse of her mesh holsters under her short skirt and along her smooth thighs, and he winces a little at that because women are never supposed to look that good. She pulls him to his feet, knowing that if she'd just leave him alone, he'd be perfectly happy to stay there for the rest of the day, or until he got hungry enough.

When he glances at her face, he pauses. Follows her line of sight. And sighs. She's looking at his crotch. He's always figured it's natural for men to ogle women and their various…physical attributes, but for her to do the same to the opposite sex and so unabashedly is a little …troublesome.

He snaps his fingers down by where her eyes have settled. "Yo. My face is up here."

She grins unrepentantly and deigns look up. "Yeah, but it's not nearly as easy on the eyes."

He raises both brows, shrugs and doesn't argue. "Fair enough. M'hungry. You comin'?"

"Is this a date?" she demands, hands on her hips.

"Nope," he says nonchalantly. "Just me bein' hungry and you bein' a convenient dinner partner. It's not like I'm gonna pay for you or anything."

She eyes him with due suspicion, because she _hates _anything that remotely resembles dating. Has told him once, unnecessarily, that she isn't even going to _consider_ it until she's a Jounin, and she plans on being a Jounin before anyone else in her age group, and definitely anyone else below.

He half-turns away from her and starts walking towards the town, and a sushi shop. After a moment, she follows him. She has this little thing where she constantly has to be half a step ahead of him, which he finds cute and strangely endearing. It takes a lot of effort.

Sometimes she proves worth it.

Other times she just makes his head hurt.

They get to the shop, and she insists on paying for both of them. He doesn't argue, he isn't that noble. He just shrugs; "Whatever." The shop-owner, an elderly woman, gives him one of those disapproving looks that go right over his head. It isn't that he doesn't notice, it's that it takes too much bloody effort to care.

Temari shoots the woman one of her vicious looks –she has a whole array of those- and says, loud enough for everyone present to hear, "He had me carry his money, you miserable old hag. Does he _look _competent enough to be in charge of the funds in this relationship!"

He raises an eyebrow, collects their tray of sushi and goes to sit down. Temari gives him an expectant little 'Well?' that he kinda-ignores.

She comes over to their table and slams both her hands down in front of him, and he looks up at her with his chopsticks poised over a particularly decent-looking piece of koi, and he blinks. "Yeah?"

"I'm a Jounin now," she announces. "Passed the test with flying colors."

"Congratulations. No wonder you kicked my ass."

"Well?" she prompts again. He lifts the section of fish to his mouth and chews thoughtfully, avoiding a response that would probably scribble 'trouble' all over the place like a particularly complicated ninja seal.

He chews. Swallows. She looks like she wants to eat _him _instead of their meal. To placate the angry beast, he sacrifices some of the food by pushing it in her general direction.

"ARGH!" she shrieks. They're earning looks again. Pretty much everyone in the shop is watching them. Which is quite a bother — why can't people mind their own business, tch. "You're so dense! I _said _that I'm a _Jounin _now!"

"And I said congratulations," he observes idly, gesturing with a chopstick. "Am I supposed to say somethin' else…?"

She leans closer, grabs his shirtfront and jerks him into a standing position. Rather more hastily than he might have liked, he has to save the tray from an untimely clatter to the floor when it catches on his chuunin's jacket. They're nose to nose and –for once- eye to eye. She's glaring. He's…finding anything of that ilk to be too much of a hassle.

"Uh?"

"Shikamaru Nara! Ask me on a goddamned date!"

He blinks. "Okay." He misses a beat and she's still giving him that 'I'm a harpy and I'm going to eat you' look so maybe he should stop playing dumb and elaborate. Just a little. Effort, oy. "Hey Temari, let's go on a date." Just like that. She lets him go and he sits back down and continues chewing thoughtfully on his food.

"For being a genius," she says darkly, "you're really bloody stupid."

He grins at her. "Yeah," he says a little vaguely, "yeah, I sorta am." She smiles. Not quite viciously. Maybe there's a new species of expression evolving. Hm. "Is it still a date if you have to pay?"

The smile slides off her face like an uncooked egg against a wall, she kicks him under the table and he knows that's a promise of more violence later that just made her break her chopstick in two. Whoops.

Phrases like 'such a bloody weasel rat bastard son of a bitch' float towards him occasionally over their food. She's stuck trying to use half of her chopstick, and he sighs. _Troublesome…_ and then he reaches over and picks up a piece of –her- food with –his- chopstick and he holds it up expectantly in front of her face.

She blinks at him.

"Never said I wasn't a nice guy," he says by way of an example, and as she opens her mouth to protest that, he pops the morsel inside. She now has the option of either choking to death or chewing, so her mouth snaps closed and she _scowls. _Takes a drink of her beverage to chase the remnants down and kicks him again.

"You're nice enough," she says wryly. "Doesn't mean I'm not gonna kick your ass later."

Something to look forward to, yay. And doesn't he just sound _so _enthusiastic?

He relents. A little. "All right, I guess I can pay once or twice." Providing he survives the first –gulp- date.

She…_dimples _at him, and he's pretty sure that was the right thing to say. He'd planned that all along, and all. _Two hundred moves…_

What a troublesome day this is shaping up to be.


	3. Ino and Chouji

Symphony of Opposites

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AN: Note…the opposites don't apply simply to personality or whathaveyou. It can also focus on a difference of opinion, which is kind of what this one's on. I have yet to decide who's next, oy. Ah, another note. Not all of these are romance, either.

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Ino hasn't been eating right.

Someone else might not have noticed, because she's really good at hiding it, but when someone loves food as much as Chouji loves food, he tends to make sure other people are as appreciative of it as he is (although he's not above stealing chicken wings from their plates when their backs are turned). And Ino hasn't been eating right.

_Girls and their diets, _he thinks, and it makes his head hurt, because he's never understood girls and he's not sure he ever wants to. Even so, the fact that Ino isn't eating right will eventually have an impact on their team, because if they can't perform at their full capacity during their missions, someone might be killed.

Chouji doesn't want to see that happen, because he cares too much. So, when Ino drops into the seat next to him with a tired little 'Hey, guys,' and proceeds to pick at her evening meal, Chouji's pretty sure something has to be done.

"Ino," he asks curiously, with a sort of gruffness that's utterly lost on his teammates, seeing as how they know him better than that. He casts a sideways glance at the blonde girl, who pauses mid-bite and turns her attention to him, one eyebrow quirked. "Let's train later."

"Me? I mean, you and me?" If she would have said that with a different inflection, it almost might have been insulting. Ino of earlier months probably would have made sure of it. But the Ino of today knew better.

"Yeah."

Across the table, Shikamaru's giving him a sort of look. Best friends have a tendency to be able to read each other, and so Chouji knows exactly what he's trying to say. _Anything wrong?_ Shikamaru asks with his eyes. The Akimichi boy shrugs and shakes his head a little. _Nope. _

_Fair enough. _And Shikamaru settles back to where he'd been half-asleep against the wall, at ease again. Shikamaru trusts him, Chouji knows. Trusts him to do whatever he thinks is right, whenever he thinks it's right to do it. Not many people trust others like that, and because of that, Chouji is glad. Very, very glad that he has Shikamaru as a friend.

And maybe he's glad of Ino, too. She may be a little too pretty and a little too shallow but she's learning from her past mistakes, and they're all growing up together and that means that everything is going the way everything should be going. The girl had been watching their silent exchange quizzically, and now that she assumes it as being over, she flips her hair and flashes a smile. "Sure, Chouji. I'm just not used to _you _wanting to train. Are you feeling okay?" she asks jokingly, nudging him a little with an elbow.

Chouji eyes her and resumes eating. Ino grins at him. "Hey, kidding, kidding."

He sighs at her and helps himself to thirds, wondering why Ino can't just be happy being Ino. Maybe she needs a Shikamaru of her own, to tell her that she's fine the way she is, and that trying to change herself won't make her like herself any better. Chouji thinks that maybe everyone should have their own Shikamaru, because if that were the case, surely the world would be a better place.

Later, after they clear the table and ruthlessly abandon Asuma-sensei to do the dishes on his own (which earns them all a laid-back sort of rebuke, the sort that Asuma-sensei is so good at). Shikamaru heads home, hands stuck in his pockets and his head down. Calls 'Later' over his shoulder and waves, which is a lot of effort for Shikamaru to put into a good-bye. Chouji tells him that he'll see him later as well, and Ino reminds him about their mission, which earns another hand wave.

Ino turns to him, smiles as kindly as Ino can smile, and asks, "So, where should we train?"

"Don't care," Chouji answers truthfully, already munching on a new bag of chips. Ino sighs.

"Must I think of everything?" she asks in fond exasperation. But she strikes off anyways and Chouji follows her and eventually they're at a little grove in the woods outside Konoha. Chouji's into his third bag of chips, and he offers it to Ino, but she shakes her head and makes a sort of warding-off motion with her hands.

"I like you, Ino," Chouji tells her. She blinks, straightens out of the combat position she'd assumed and, for lack of anything better to do, she blinks again.

"I…like you too, Chouji. But that was…random."

He settles on the ground, licks his fingers and glances back up at her. "You're pretty, and you're smart."

She looks nervous, like maybe she's thinking he's about to ask her on a date or something. Which is almost funny, in its own little way, because he's Chouji and she's Ino and he knows that dates just wouldn't work with them. She's not his type, after all. "Um…thanks, Chouji."

"And," he enunciates particularly, giving her a sort of Chouji-ish glare, "you're fine the way you are."

She has the good graces to look guilty, because like he'd said, Ino is smart, and he knows that she knows what he's talking about, and probably won't try to deny it, either. She sits on the ground a little ways away from him, cross-legged and cups her chin in her hands. "That obvious, huh?"

"You're my teammate. I have to look out for you if you won't do it yourself." Chouji shrugs and digs through his ever-present satchel for another bag of chips.

This time, Ino has some, too.

Chouji thinks that maybe it's hard being someone else's Shikamaru. But he's willing to try until he gets it right. So he watches as Ino munches on chips and makes sure she eats her portion and knows that tomorrow will be a better day.


End file.
